IP addresses in short supply, 234.3 million version 4 IPs left

By on Jul 23, 2010 at 6:41 AM
Internet July 23, 2010

Cisco Router

The Internet is going to run out of IP addresses in one year. That is what John Curran, President and CEO of the American Registry for Internet Numbers, and Vint Cerf, Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist, are saying. The 32-bit IPv4 system currently in use is limited to just over 4 billion unique addresses. With the explosion of mobile devices, internet aware products, and 4G integrated technologies the IPv4 system has a mere 234.37 million addresses left for allocation. The next generation IP address protocol — IPv6 — is a full 128-bits, and has enough allocatable addresses to provide “every person on the planet [with] over 4 billion addresses.” The move to IPv6 has been slow, however larger companies like Google and Facebook have already started implementing the new protocol. Some companies are claiming this impending IPcalypse is merely the next Y2K type scare, and 10 years from now we will still be using IPv4. What do you think? Hit the jump to watch Google’s Vint Cerf — a man who, to us, looks like The Architect from The Matrix — explain why he is concerned.

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  • Mark Thomas

    Still?

    Don’t we hear this story every year? Run out already.

  • http://twitter.com/Mrkal_el Kal-El

    It will happen mathematically, but maybe they will come up with some type of cloning solution, etc before a majority switch to IPv6

  • burnet

    Leave it to good ol’ google to save the day.

  • rederikus

    IPv6 has been around for a looong time.

    Maybe we should use that instead. Afer all one of its design goals was to provide lots and lots of IP addresses.

    Businesses are, as usual, dragging their feet over this since it will cost money to make the change.

    Whan we runout there will be patches and fixes and work arounds until finally these idiots realize that we just gotta use to tool that was designed to do the job – IPv6.

  • Author unknown

    Reminds me of that commercial where the computer tells the guy sitting there….

    “you have reached the end of the Internet, please go back”.

  • http://www.helixzone.net helix2301

    Looks like the internet might be moving to IPv6 sooner then most people expected. Larger companies like Google and Facebook I would have expected to be running IPv6 there infrastructure is huge and always growing.

  • Frank

    Random, weird, yet a really interesting and good article. Fortunately things are in place going forward so no need to freak out. It’s almost like saying license plate numbers will run out when all you have to do is add some more characters!

  • T$

    @4….. Business don’t use public ip’s for their workers computers..

    • Andrew

      You’d be surprised. My corporate laptop currently has a public IP assigned to it via DHCP. Granted, we’re all behind a “great firewall” here (think China style) and no internal machines are accessible from the outside so there’s no reason to use public IPs, but my company has a /8 block that we got from IANA in 1991 and we use it for everything (both internal and external).

      My IT department could easily use the 10.0.0.0/8 block internally with no issue, but for reasons unknown to me they don’t.

      Being I’m not in IT, I’m not privy to discussion of IPv6, but I’ve not heard anything of my company rolling it out for anything.

      • Peter

        So that means your company has 16,777,216 addresses? Looks like the IANA was pretty wasteful. Could companies resell part of their IP blocks?

      • Colin

        Better yet, rat your company out to the regional numbering authority and they can revoke the block. That’s ridiculous.

  • AT&T Mall Kiosk DB CSR

    “You have many questions, and although the process has altered your consciousness, you remain irrevocably human. Ergo, some of my answers you will understand, and some of them you will not. Concordantly, while your first question may be the most pertinent, you may or may not realize it is also the most irrelevant”

  • celulares

    The Architect, Droids, Nexus… I’m afraid to end like Sara Connor if I root my phone!

  • Liq

    I work for an ISP and we have started using ipv6,

  • Jayrodathome

    Instead of switching they should just sell the remainding to the highest bidder! Supply and demand!!

  • HunterA3

    and yet we have several companies and government agencies sitting on class A address blocks with over 65000 usable addresses. Until they give those up and they get fully allocated, we’re really not out of addresses.

    • Peter

      Class A has over 16 million usable addresses. Class B has a maximum of 16,384 hosts.

      • HunterA3

        You are correct sir. That’s what I get for not waiting for my coffee to kick in before commenting. :)

  • http://www.roguelazer.com Roguelazer

    IPv6 is indeed sufficient to provide “every person on the planet [with] over 4 billion addresses”. Of course, that’s a pretty loose estimate, because it actually provides everyone on the planet with roughly 2^95 (5e28) addresses. Even if you did what they’re doing now and allocated in blocks of 64 bits, that’s 2e19 addresses, way more than 4 billion.

    There are only about 2^33 people on this planet…

  • gee

    tmobile is the only carrier to issue ipv6

  • Cadaver

    Time to move to IPv6 already!

  • Yo

    Another sign the world will end in 2012

  • B

    My old computer professor told us about this years back. I’m sure many of us already noticed this same thing happening with phone numbers and area codes in our areas.

  • Aquaman_Tom

    Just switch to v6 already. It’s somewhat easier to add IP addresses to a network because the IP address is in hex instead of numbers. If I had it my way your computers mac address should be your IP in v6.

    • DPC

      It is.

      • DPC

        … with a network portion

  • Jim

    This definitly would explain why larger companies, like AT&T & Verizon (who control much larger swaths of IP addresses), are suddenly trying to force caps and excessive overage charges down consumers’ throats. They know that bandwidth (the commodity they keep claiming is going to run out, but will easily keep up with demand and continue to get cheaper) is not the issue. It’s IP addresses. IP addresses WILL run out, at least the ones sold wholesale from internet authorities will. Many of the IP addresses that larger companies hold are not even being used, they are squatting. Waiting like hawks with dollar signs in their eyes because they know they will become the sole purveyors of IP addresses when IPv4 addresses dry up. They will resell unused IPs to other companies… at a price. This will allow them to continue to push competitors out and continue to control the price of the Internet as smaller providers will have to buy or lease IPs from the larger companies at higher secondary-market prices. In the end, at least in the U.S., we *MAY* end up forcing companies to IPv6 to stop artificial Internet service price inflation at the hands of those who control the most IP addresses.

  • Deaconclgi

    Architech: There are two doors, the one to your right leads to Google and the future, the one to your left leads to a KFC Bigbox meal and IPv4.
    Cleo: I like you better on the KFC logo…..(grabs chicken)
    Architech: Hope….humanity’s greates strength and it’s greatest weakness…..

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